On December 11, 2016, two journalists working for the Arabic-language service of international news organisation Al-Jazeera were held by security forces in The Gambia.
Al Jazeera’s Mauritania bureau chief Zeinebou Mint Erebih and cameraman Mohamed Ould Beidar reported that they were taken away from their hotel by plainclothes officers and detained in the night of December 11, 2016.
Erebih and Beidar were released on December 12 and transported to Banjul airport where they were deported to neighbouring Senegal. While reasons for the arrest, detention and subsequent of the journalists were not made to them, news reports attribute it to an interview they conducted with President-elect Adama Barrow.
